"A debut affair; Chicago-boy makes noise under the muggy haze of the south loop, pollinated with nomadic, modal guitar tones. These tracks were captured using both 8- and 4-track analog equipment with an old Tele Custom; a Roland TR-66 Rhythm Arranger as accompaniment on the A-side, a djembe on the B-side. At the final point of any winter, harshness always gives way to a blooming rain season. Like some kind of mildness to appease your internal disorders, it removes your dusty clothes and bathes you in warm water. The Axis:sovA is weathered; that Chrome detail's got a bit o' Shankar here, a tad of Schenker there. These markings add some character and serve to remind you, it's the fools what do hesitate to meditate."

"Consumed by beastly guitars, the songs on Contoured Heat are simply menacing. Opening cut 'More Bumper Than A Body Shop' stabs jaggedly before diving into a heavy groove, drums drenched in sweat smelling of the dark days of Altamont. '(I've Got The Power)' bounces spryly, reminding you that 'the crippled and the beaten get even,' before tearing you through to the eye of a sonic cyclone with its loops and solos shredding in a panorama of psychedelia. Mysticism roars in the tracks that follow -- 'Outsider Erotica' entices like the dreamy glaze of a single night in Marrakech, its themes of tender seduction sung to something like the bastard child of Ananda Shankar and late-period Black Flag, while 'Bilateral Dysfunction' emotes like a desert expanse that would not seem out of place on a soundtrack to the films of Jodorowski. Weighted, meditative explorations are central to 'Languid Liquid' and the tracks that follow -- 'Oden v. Odin' with its wordless chant and enchanting hook, the lamenting lines and dense grooves of 'Anonynominous' -- an experience ripe with drone, repetition, and layers upon layers of delayed, effects-laden guitars."

"Rock in a post-Beefheart vs. 90s Aerosmith way, heart surprisingly always on sleeve. Crossing the Rubicon -- it's better when it isn't safe, when there's a chance of being caught. But, life is free and easy beyond the wall, in the Neon City, so why risk it? Why defy the panoptic eye? Don't heed the call of the exotic/erotic drums. Ignore the riffs. Don't stop to wonder how they float above, below, between the beat - simultaneously. Then comes the refrain. Don't mind it -- it's the anthem of the Other. There's no context for this, at least not on your side. No, stay there. Choose style, and a clearly demarcated one at that, over substance. Those fluorescent glasses won't do much good on our side. True freedom of expression can only be experienced by breaking barriers. You thought the wall came down years ago? Perhaps it did, but we put it back up. For you. Yet, despite all warnings, you will slip through. You'll find a way to the forbidden zone. We built it, so you'd come. Things got too easy without barbed wire and watchtowers. Without checkpoints and tunnels, it all felt too safe. There's no exhilaration without danger. There's Torrid Sex In East Berlin."